On the latest episode of Nested Folders, Rosemary Orchard and I talked about decluttering for productivity. It was super inspirational for me.

Timing has a lot to do with ideas. I'm no stranger to decluttering, minimalism, and just plain thinking about better spaces. I loved Marie Kondo's books, as well as The Power of Less and Zen Habits by Leo Babauta, but there is a big difference between appreciating ideas and implementing them. We've even done a Nested Folders episode specifically on workspace setup before. But the timing here? Just right.

Here's where my workspace started.

I got a lot of positive comments on my "before" state - thanks, everyone! But it just wasn't great:

• That desk? Too small. Every day was a struggle to even decide where my coffee cup was going to live.
• That pile of "stuff" on the cabinet? Unsorted and unattractive. Also
• A stool is there functioning as a table. That's... not right.
• Because I have no desk space, in trays and office supplies are behind me. Spoiler: they never get used properly.
• Did I mention the desk is too small? Where do I write?

Now, that said, there were things I did really like:

• My equipment is aces. I am very happy with my tech tools.
• That corkboard is really useful. I took down content for review and photos, but it's really lovely.
• For all the flak I took on Twitter, that chair is super comfy and tall and I love it. So there.
• The wall dividers that create a border for my workspace without totally closing me of are pretty, functional, and effective.

So. Time to fix this up.

Knowing I really wanted an L desk, I found a desk being sold from an office that is renovating, and that was going to be what I based all the changes around.

Next step? Reduce. I went through everything I was saving in my delightful piles (not all pictured in the first pics because shame), and filed, recycled, shredded, garbaged it all. I shouldn't be surprised that all that "stuff" was largely unkeepable, but it's still disappointing to know I hung on to what was mostly effectively junk for so long.

Now it's time to look at everything that was left and find its home (or part with it). To really get ready for this, I moved that white cabinet out of my workspace to just outside the divider, ensuring I have access to the storage, but not occupying space. The new desk is much bigger.

I sat in my chair at the empty desk for a few minutes, miming typing and writing. The goal was to determine which way I would face for computing, which would determine a lot of things. Probably unsurprisingly (that's two non-surprises now, for those keeping score), I ended up feeling best about the computer in the corner. This wasn't an immediate slam dunk (I kinda wanted it on the wall side so that I'd have a longer open space on my right for writing), but the option to rest my elbows on the desk "wings" (don't @ me) and the realization that there was still space enough to my right to write sold me. This was also the best use of the amount of depth the desk had.

This single decision made everything else make sense fast. This placed the monitor, to which I added a riser so that the MacBook could live underneath, keyboard, and mouse. The space to my right was for writing, so the now empty in trays and stationery could go there, and my left was becoming sort of a flex space, with just a lot of room. This is cool, because I can lay out index cards for the cork board, or set lunch, or whatever. It makes sense to me.

I placed a Boogie Board Blackboard I have on an extra tablet stand that turned up, giving me a spot for ephemeral messages to self (this sparks joy), and I used my Roost stand to elevate my iPad on Magic Keyboard as my second screen/device.

Last came a few bits and bobs: false plants give a sense of organic feel, even if they aren't really organic, the chargers (a Cheotech chi charger and Elago watch stand), my IKEA phone stand, and the bell.

The result?

I worried that this would all feel cluttery, but it isn't. Everything has been deliberately chosen, placed, and used, and I think it's that deliberateness that makes all the difference. Everyone has a workflow; the big question is how much of that workflow exists because it was designed purposefully compared to how much was fallen in to because of habit or assumption.

It is this sense of deliberate and purposeful design that was at the heart of an interview I had the pleasure of doing with The Sweet Setup about my iOS workspace, too, and which is at the heart of everything I'm trying to do. I don't want to work on autopilot, or in a fashion that is a product of the universe. I want to work in the ways that suit me best, that bring out my best, and that get me to do my best.

Have you done a workspace overhaul? What worked for you? I feel like I could still fine tune, so hoping to hear from folks!

I wrote about re-imaging my Home Screen for productivity, and have gotten some tremendous feedback and ideas. Thanks everyone!

One thought really stuck with me: that this screen was designed around OmniFocus as a data source. This makes sense, since I use OmniFocus, and it's my screen, but what about others?

For those who use Reminders or Reminders-based apps like GoodTask, I have made an updated WidgetPack widget and an updated Charty rings widget.

Now, of course I also had to fiddle with it, because I’m me, but here are some thoughts:

• Yes, my first cut had more functionality, but I was finding too many aspects distracting, so I have distilled the content more: actions and events only
• Having events on my front page (courtesy of a more compressed heading) is really useful
• Speaking of the header, it is now linked to the Shortcut to refresh widget content
• Toolbox Pro actions make each Reminder shown link back to themselves in the Reminders app
• The heading above actions (GET TO IT) links to the Shortcut to refresh the Charty ring widget (though the latest beta allows the widget to run a shortcut!)

That context out of the way, the things you would need to have these widgets work:

• WidgetPack
• Charty (1.4 TestFlight beta required)
• Toolbox Pro

If you have those, I hope you enjoy these!

Update: The links for the Get To It and Dashboard widgets have been updated with fixes (addressed an error if no matching OF tasks in Get To It and changed iconography alignment for calendar events in Dashboard). Enjoy!

Home Screen fever calmed down a bit as iOS 14 wove its way in to my every day. I had settled in to my routines and was living my best widget life.

And then Charty's new beta hit. And I reimagined everything.

With the ability to make ring charts, I pictured Charty as my path to gamifying action. I've written in the past about using Charty data to list counts of OmniFocus actions, but now I can count down.

After playing with the colours of Charty and placing it in the middle of my Home Screen, I thought, "Huh. That screen looks like part of an app." So I opened up WidgetPack and worked more on creating a header widget to lead my screen with, and a revamped widget with OmniFocus actions.

I figured if I can visualize and list my actions, what else could I do? I needed ways to not just see things, but an interface to do things. That led me to adding buttons to the header widget, and then more buttons to run the Shortcuts to refresh the data of these widgets.

Saddened that I couldn't have a calendar widget that suited my needs and aesthetic, I started imagining a second screen that would show upcoming events, as well as counts of and access to more things.

I'm really happy with the result, both in form and in function.

To break it all down, the rest of this post will go widget by widget, sharing just how each is built and what all each does, and giving you the tools to do this, too. Hopefully, this can help you either customize a similar experience, or just plain implement what I've made. Enjoy!

Overall

This was pretty purpose built for me, so substitutions and edits of what I share here may/will be needed. The apps I use to make the widgets are:

• Charty (requiring the TestFlight beta of 1.4)
• WidgetPack
• Toolbox Pro
• OmniFocus
• Drafts
• Agenda

I'll also note that my intent, like I said, was for this screen to feel like an app. As such, I employed a black wallpaper and designed the widgets as white on black. A white Home Screen, even with the intent to feel app-like just felt like too much.

Header Widget

Obviously, this WidgetPack widget shares the day and date, which I had originally pegged WidgetSmith to do, but I wanted to add functions, which is what those four circles are:

• Add new item to OmniFocus
• Start new draft in Drafts
• Refresh the OmniFocus Get To It widget below
• Refresh the Charty chart

To make sure it's current, the Shortcut has an automation to run every day at 00:00, which I highly recommend.

I use a Toolbox Pro action here to return home at the end of the flow (this is true for each of these Shortcuts, actually), just so that if I run it, I end up back at it, but this is optional (though you should still support Toolbox Pro for many reasons).

Charty Omni Rings Widget

This is the crown jewel of the design, and creates three rings with Charty to show progress based on tasks in OmniFocus:

• [tasks completed today with a due date before 11:59pm] / ([available tasks today with a due date before 11:59pm] + [tasks completed today with a due date before 11:59pm])
• [flagged tasks completed today] / ([available flagged tasks] + [flagged tasks completed today])
• [forecast-tagged tasks completed today] / ([available forecast-tagged tasks] + [forecast-tagged tasks completed today])

This is a great visual of my day and its state. One gotcha, though, is that this is a beta, and so doesn't handle zero values elegantly yet. For example, if you have zero flagged tasks, it substitues 100 for the denominator and reports 0/100 complete. I think I'd like to see a closed ring for 0/0 done, but we'll see how this develops.

The Shortcut does require a particular colour scheme, and I've linked to it below.

For the widget, I chose to set the left background to 000000 for both light and dark, and the right to 0F0F10. I turn off the title and legend, and the chart takes care of the rest.

To keep the chart current, one might want an automation set to run the Shortcut on particular intervals or events. I tried doing it each time OmniFocus is closed, but I trigger many Shortcuts from OmniFocus tasks (as URL schemes), and found that exiting OF to run one Shortcut but automation trying to run another produced less desirable effects.

OmniFocus Get To It Widget

This was very much based on my previous WidgetPack widget work for OmniFocus, but is optimized for number of actions, and I think the design is nicer, too.

Like the Charty widget above it, this grabs available actions that are either due, flagged, or forecast-tagged, but then colours the checkbox indicator for each accordingly to match the Charty colour scheme.

Each action in the widget links to its OmniFocus task, and if there are more tasks that can be shown, the "and x more" line links to a particular perspective.

Unlike other iterations, I specifically designed this widget in these colours, or responding to light/dark mode. I have an aesthetic I wanted, and so that's baked in, but it would be possible to edit this otherwise.

Again, an automation to keep this up to date isn't a bad idea, but of course, the Header Widget has a button to refresh it.

Dashboard Widget

I fiddled with this for an awfully long time, but the genesis of this was thinking that if I can count some things with the Charty chart, what else might I count?

As set up (please edit to your needs!), this WidgetPack widget shows:

• Number of Inbox items in OmniFocus (and links to the OmniFocus Inbox)
• Number of available OmniFocus actions tagged with my Waiting tag (and links to my Waiting Perspective)
• Number of available OmniFocus actions tagged with a People tag (and links to my People Perspective)
• Number of drafts in my Drafts Inbox (and links to the search of my Inbox in Drafts)

After being able to see those counts. I thought about the buttons I did for the Header widget, and figured this was a good way for me to add more functionality. The buttons:

• Run my Today Shortcut (that links to today's journal entry in Agenda)
• Run my Rapid Log Shortcut (part of my Agenda journaling system)
• Run my List Manager Shortcut (I'll share this another day)
• Run my Daily Journal Shortcut (again, my Agenda-based system)
• Run the Dashboard Shortcut (to refresh the widget's contents)
• Run the Charty Omni Week Widget (to refresh the chart below)

Phew.

Lastly, I struggled with the best way to see calendar events. I don't like the design of the stock Calendar widget, and it can't be forced in to dark mode to match the rest, so what the heck, I made my own.

Events are shown for the calendar day the Shortcut is run on, but only ones that have not yet occurred/started. As with OmniFocus tasks, each event in the widget links to its event in Calendar (by way of a separate Shortcut, since the Calendar doesn't have a lovely URL scheme of its own). If no events remain, the widget will say so (with a moon, because moons are relaxing).

Charty Omni Week Widget

I've shared this before, but I wanted to have this on my screen as a clear visual of my accomplishments. This Charty-based widget shows the count of OmniFocus tasks completed today and on the six days prior to today, giving me a sense of my wins.

As with the Charty Omni Rings widget, I set the background to 000000 and I hide the Y axis (relativism is more important to me than absolute numbers, YMMV).

Conclusion

And that really is all it! If you've read this far, holy smokes. Thank you. I hope there is material here that you find useful or can adapt to your needs.

I'd love to hear what you think, so feel free to drop a comment here.

Update: just fixed a minor bug in refresh for Flagged and Forecast-Tagged widgets - links updated below!

Thank you everyone for the tremendous support of my first cut at making widgets for OmniFocus with WidgetPack! I know I am finding them super helpful.

After spending some time using them, learning more about WidgetPack, and agonizing over design decisions (padding and spacing matters), I have made new versions of the widgets with better utility and visual appeal.

Here’s what’s new:

• any OF task displayed actually links to that task inside OF so that you could see its notes, edit it, mark it complete, drop it or whatever
• the design specifically only shows a maximum of four actions (this was brutal, but necessary to allow for space for longer task names and still look good)
• a count of relevant undisplayed tasks is shown at the bottom of the widget, linked to the relevant perspective (Forecast Today for the due and forecast-tagged widgets, and Flagged for the flagged widget)
• a colour-coordinated button has been added to each widget to drive right to adding a new task in OF (like quick entry, not automatically assuming a due date or flagged state)
• a colour-coordinated refresh button to run the shortcut that makes it to update widget contents
• dark mode support, so that the widget respects system state of dark mode
• as referred to above, optimized spacing, layout, and sizing of elements
• comments in the top section to enable anyone to (fairly easily?) customize the widget with choices for the accent colour, title, SF symbol, and link to open OF with

And the shortcuts are:

• Due
• Flagged
• Forecast-tagged

These have all really been oriented for large size widgets which I think makes sense, based on the amount of content. Running a shortcut here will create the widget in WidgetPack, so adding a WidgetPack widget to your screen and then editing it to point at the widget you’ve made will do the trick.

I’ll admit that the shortcuts take a bit of time to run, but I don’t know if it’s worth putting in a lot of work to try to optimize; I know the Omni Team is working hard on real native widgets that would be, I’m sure, much more efficient than these.

Hope you enjoy, please keep sharing feedback and thoughts!

Maybe I'm impatient, but I just love OmniFocus as my task management system, but am also finding my way of interacting with my phone deeply changed by iOS 14 and widgets.

I tweeted last week about this: Shortcuts (though that was iOS 13) and widgets let me get at expose functions and content of apps in ways that make me think less about the app itself, and more about the discrete and specific ways I benefit from them. Everything becomes a service.

I'm spending less time "in apps" and way more time just at my home screens. Do I care about what the weather app says in totality, or do I just need to know the temperature outside right now? Do I need to see my calendar, or do I just need to know what's up next and when? Do I need to see my task management system, or do I just need the list of things due today?

This shift is very powerful.

I was referred to WidgetPack, which reminds me a bit of Charty in its conceit: a set of iOS Shortcuts actions to capture, arrange, and format content in to a widget. Given that I love me my shortcuts, this was the solution I needed for bringing the value of widgets to the power of OmniFocus.

Here's my Home Screen:

The stack of large widgets require WidgetPack, and are built with these Shortcuts:

• Due Widget
• Flagged Widget
• Forecast-Tagged Widget

For bonus marks, each of these widgets links to OmniFocus perspectives when tapped: the Today Forecast view for Due and Tagged, and the Flagged perspective for Flagged. Naturally.

The small widget is powered by Charty, and I have written about it already.

Hope these are useful!

At my work, we develop goals on a quarterly cadence, and we do so pretty thoughtfully in order to limit our focus on what the key achievements we’re striving for are.

This works great for me; Rosemary Orchard and I have spoken numerous times of the twelve week year on Nested Folders. What gets me every time, though, are the all-the-other-things: projects that might be needed or wanted, but which aren’t in service of my goals.

I think a lot about how full everyone’s days are. We consume content and ideas in all our waking hours. Anything we do is not just a thing we have chosen, but also a signal of something we have forgone. Silly finite time.

In consideration of all of this, I now have two root folders in my task management system:

1. Goals
2. Distractions

Obviously, goals contains the (small) number of projects and their associated tasks that map back to my goals. Everything else goes in Distractions.

Now, this doesn’t mean that I don’t work on projects or skip taking action on tasks inside the Distractions folder. I’d love to, but that isn’t practical.

What it does mean, though, is that I am reminded at every turn that a step towards project in Distractions is a step away from outcomes in Goals.

Choices have consequences, and I need to make sure I remember that. It might seem harsh to call critical things distractions, but left unchecked, the urgent and the critical will eat my goals for lunch.

I am loving using the iOS 14 widgets to keep a clear eye on my day, and with Charty and its (beta) widgets and data views, I have been able to craft iOS Shortcuts that display really useful data on my homescreen.

I have two charts that I love, each drawing on my OmniFocus data to quickly display useful things:

1. OmniDay: this uses the data view to give me a list of counts of actions I need to be on top of. The Shortcut that generates this chart can be downloaded here.
   • 🚀 Action, a total of:
   • ⏰ Due actions available
   • 🎏 Flagged actions available
   • ⭐️ Forecast-tagged actions available
   • ☑️ Completed items today
2. OmniWeek: this graphs a chart of actions completed today (☆), and in the six previous days leading up to today. The Shortcut that generates this chart can be downloaded here.

With these charts generated, it’s a matter of adding the Charty widgets to a home screen. For bonus marks, I made a third Shortcut called “Refresh Charts”, which just runs the two shortcuts above. I added it as a widget in a stack “behind” the OmniDay data, ensuring I can always quickly update the views.

I hope someone finds this useful and enjoys! Would love to hear what folks think.

Back on episode 25 of Nested Folders, Rosemary Orchard and I discussed agreements and the many kinds of these that are important for effective collaboration.

For me, a lot of these agreements end up getting supported by Slack, which is great.

I talked about my love for Data Jar on episode 49 of the Automators podcast, and how it allows complex data to be easily reused by multiple different Shortcuts.

This gave me an idea: what if I had a dictionary containing all the channel identifiers of my Slack workspaces? Then I could easily interact with them by web API.

Even better, could I make this Data Jar dictionary with a Shortcut?

Yes. Here you go!

As well, here are a few arguments to consider adding to the URL in the Shortcut for better utility:

• exclude_archived=true
• types=public_channel,private_channel
• limit=1000 (if you have a big/busy workspace)

Lastly, I’d like to give a shoutout to this Medium post by Jake Bateman, which got me rolling in how to use the Slack web API. Very useful!

One of the features I wish OmniFocus had was the ability to add checklists. As an example, I need to go through a morning routine of four items every morning, but having four discrete actions in OmniFocus feels a little clutterful, and having a badge that reads 4 seems inappropriate.

There are other use cases, of course, where a number of steps represented by a single task makes sense to me:

• Do my weekly review
• Complete post-production on Nested Folders episode
• Make bread in the bread maker

Thanks to iOS Shortcuts, the amazing Toolbox Pro actions for it, and some internet research, I have come up with a solution that creates a single task in OmniFocus, a list in Reminders with the same name, and the steps laid out in that list, which is linked to from the note of the OmniFocus task.

It’s a little bit hacky, but I think this help me keep my OmniFocus actions focused (ha), while giving the discrete steps to my actions a safe home for reuse.

Interested to hear if others find this useful!

One of the things I wanted to make easier was how to build a new action in OmniFocus based on an existing action. If I’m in Forecast, for example, and am completing an action, maybe I want to make a new action in that project quickly and easily.

I made a Next Action Shortcut for exactly this. It works by sharing an action in OmniFocus to it, then asks for a name for the new action, and then adds an action named that to the shared action’s project. For bonus marks, it adds a note to the new action showing what action it was created from, a link to that action, and that action’s note.

Enjoy!

I really really benefit from the review of my projects and actions weekly, but I find it so hard to do. With constant ideas about things I could chase, or looking at that next project or back to one I was at already, I find myself wanting to bounce around the review more than follow it, and this doesn’t have the best effects.

To help myself stay on track for an OmniFocus review, I built myself this Guided Weekly Review Shortcut for iOS.

Best run with headphones 😎

On import, it will ask for the tag to use for actions added. On each run, it will ask for the folder(s) whose projects I want to review, then tell me, one by one, the name of a project followed by a prompt to speak back the next action. If what I say blank is nothing, it goes on to the next project, else it adds what I speak as an action to that project tagged with the tag I identified from import question (I made a tag called “From Review”, so that I can quickly group, review, update, and refine what I add during this process).

What I love about this is that I can throw my AirPods in, go for a walk, and conduct an effective review.

Optionally, I might add a display of actions in the project being reviewed, but my goal was to avoid having to look at the screen. I did add purposeful pauses, though (press stop to halt dictation, press okay to move on) so that I wouldn’t feel rushed to speak my action, and so that I could drive the pace of review and not systematize that.

Hope this is helpful to others - let me know what you think!

I generally prefer to write shorter form, but I’ve failed at that here. Maybe fix a sandwich or grab something to drink for this one.

I have been blessed with Inattentive Attention Deficit Hyperactive Disorder (ADHD). What this means for me, is that where it might be most appropriate to cast a line of thinking, I cast a web. If the most expected means of following a neural process is to start at A, then go to B, then C, then D, I might start at A, check in at each of Q, then 2, then π, then go to B and C simultaneously before entirely disregarding D because it’s of limited interest.

It’s neuro-atypical, as they say, but it’s my typical.

This is advantageous to me in a lot of ways, because it means I can connect ideas in different ways, see hidden or obscure patterns, and flow rapidly with change. I can quickly juggle a myriad of different kinds of work, adapt to and work with new ideas, and be ready to shift strategy or objectives at any time.

What’s challenging, though, is that this means I have an all or nothing input system; I have to work really hard to focus on one thing. It can be difficult to have a conversation in a pub, for instance, because my brain wants to hear every conversation. It also makes deep work challenging, because I struggle to work on the same thing for longer periods of time. The biggest challenge, though, is that I am mentally exhausted every day. I take in a lot of input, and so need to deliberately find ways to empty my mental tank, lest it overflow or burst.

Two weeks before Christmas, I sat down to my work in my typical way. I sat down at my typical workspace, set my typical coffee down on the typical side of my computer, and started to go about my typical tasks. I then started breathing heavily, unable to catch my breath, ran upstairs, cried for an hour, and then experienced a total system shutdown, where I was unable to remain awake for more than about five to ten minutes. That lasted a little over twenty-four hours.

Not typical.

I have struggled with mental well-being throughout my life, with depression and thoughts of self-harm starting as early as the fourth grade. I have worked hard to develop mental models for myself to manage my thought patterns, separating the healthy from the unhealthy, and the factual from the false, but what had been like an an omnipresent background hum of anxiety was now a screaming chorus.

Meeting with my psychologist was amazing. Working together, we were able to determine that my ADHD self-management tactics had hit a ceiling of scalability, and I needed more tools to keep my thoughts in order.

What I thought was an anxiety issue was really a secondary (and not unreasonable) reaction to my mental capacity and inventory. Too much stuff, and I start to get anxious or frustrated with all the bits I can no longer manage. Picture an overfull shopping cart having things topple out of it as you push it up and down the aisles of a grocery store. As my kids mature, need more complex support, and as my life generally grows, I just can’t hold all the things.

Fast forward a few short months, and here comes COVID-19. Talk about more input.

I am so grateful, though, that I have been equipped with some key strategies for managing myself that apply so well to living through times of isolation with a full house, and so I wanted to share them here.

1. Structure: What decisions can we make and what guidelines can we establish to create consistency and remove questions later? Examples might include defining workspaces for everyone in the house, meal planning, chore charts, and sorting out roles/responsibilities.
2. Routine: How might activities be executed in predictable patterns to guide expectations and build upon structure? Consider aspects like timing of meals, scheduling when recreational time is allowed compared to when it's time for work, and sustaining pre-COVID self-care routines like bathing, putting on work clothes, etc.
3. Activity: What ways can I be active to help my body support my mind? If there is a yard, consider how it can be used, or ensure going for walks is part of the structure and routine to help the body support the mind. Fresh air and movement are huge keys to keeping my mental tank at an appropriate level.
4. Reflection: A very specific routine that adds to structure is a look back at every day to think about (and even journal) what was great, what wasn't so great, and what I want to remember or learn from. This helps every day become instructive about how I can consciously improve my life and psychological well-being.

This is all work, and work I need to be conscious of. The payoff is huge, though, since it all amounts it keeping me on the rails and coping with really trying times.

As it turns out, then, my love of GTD, doing the Nested Folders podcast, and writing what I learn here aren’t just proclivities or preferences; they’re survival strategies.

Exercising my mental health is very necessarily part of my typical structure and routines - is it part of yours, too? What does your typical look like?

I’ve written before about a Boss Review Shortcut, a way to make it easier for me to prepare for meetings with my boss at work, but I have since expanded this to work with members of my team as well. I also had a great time discussing this with David Sparks and Rosemary Orchard on Automators episode 49.

This 1-1 Prep Email Shortcut presents a dictionary of people choices, allows me to pick, and then finds anything tagged with their name in OmniFocus to build an email to them around.

Taken further (but less easily shared with all of you here), this could be connected to a reusable Data Jar dictionary, like I’ve talked about in a previous post. A great way to ensure consistency in data, as well as to update existing Shortcuts quickly with new team members, and a huge time saver in exploring potential new Shortcuts.

I don't write code, and I don't know how to script, but I really love the value of automation. This is why iOS Shortcuts is absolutely my jam. And I love that there is such an awesome growing ecosystem around it!

With Toolbox Pro, Launchcuts, Pushcut, and Shortcutify, one can really expand what iOS Shortcuts can do and how they are executed. I'm super cognizant, though, about what functions of this are "for me", though, as an under-qualified nerd.

When I first heard about Data Jar, I didn't really get it. It felt sort of like a Programmer's Thing. Updating a Shortcut of mine that had a dictionary in it, though, it totally came to me, and I had an awesome time talking about it with David Sparks and Rosemary Orchard on Automators episode 49.

What if I could use this dictionary outside of this Shortcut? And if I can do that, what if I built up the amount of information in that dictionary?

Using Data Jar like this has made the barrier to entry to new Shortcuts so much easier for me, and opened up my creativity.

An example:

At work I support a team, and so there is value in having Shortcuts reference my team members. How cool, then, to have a dictionary that stores values referring to discrete aspects of how their data might be useful in, say, emails or our task management systems.

Having each team member's attributes help me automate all kinds of emails and messages:

• First name
• Last name
• Full name
• Email address
• Pronoun
• Specific app API key

It's also really neat that Data Jar lets me get values based on simple and readable paths. Like, I can get the value for team.selected_item.email so simply when choosing from a list or passing a bit of text. This becomes easy shorthand for using the right info in a variety of places.

I'm particularly happy about the idea of including pronoun, because it can make auto-generated emails sound more personal:

Dear client,

Thank you for requesting project project title!

I have assigned this work to team.chosen item.firstname on my team to work with you on. team.chosen_item.pronoun will be in touch with you to determine and share next steps.

Of course, that email also cc's team.chosen_item.email, too.

For bonus marks, using Data Jar means I need only update one spot of team member data changes or if a new member joins the team. Changes in this one spot are instantly reflected in all the Shortcuts. Hooray!

So this is one of my most main ways of using Data Jar, but I'm really interested in hearing how others are putting it to work. Let me know!

Last year, I spent the time reading The Bullet Journal Method, by Ryder Carroll, and also wrote about digital bankruptcy with analog saving me.

While the principles of this are often a saving grace of augmented focus, I love the advantages of a digital system:

• I can search and refer back
• The right metadata surfaces the right things at the right time
• It is easily re-organized based on changing needs

Of course, aspects like metadata, information architectures, and infinite choice make digital systems complex and nuanced. I need something sustainable through simplicity, particularly to make sure I’m ready for change, like how Rosemary Orchard and I talked about on our Nested Folders podcast  (and, more recently, on Automators episode 49).

Thinking of this, I embarked on a journey to digitally bullet journal. After a few iterations, I came up with a list of interoperating tools, which I think will prove a very effective stack.

The platform consists of five pieces on iOS:

1. Agenda: This acts as the journal and reference system.
2. OmniFocus: This is for action management.
3. Daily Journal Shortcut: I've written about this shortcut before, but to recap, this Shortcut sets up a daily journal (that's why it's named that way) with today's weather, calendar appointments, and OmniFocus due, flagged, and forecast-tagged actions.
4. Rapid Logger Shortcut: This is the game-changer. When run, it asks for input, where I can Bullet Journal style add multiple items, each thing on a fresh line. Each line then gets appended to today's daily journal in Agenda, timestamped. If a line starts with a dash, it gets treated like an action, and so appears as a checklist item in the Agenda daily journal note, but also gets added to my OmniFocus inbox as an action. As a bonus, the text going in to OmniFocus is treated as TaskPaper, so I can add flags, tags, and dates accordingly, which is awesome, but that metadata is not included in the Agenda note, keeping that list clean and tidy.
5. Daily Wrap Shortcut: This is the icing on the cake. When run, this Shortcut helps me reflect on the day by asking guiding questions, the answers to which are then appended to the daily journal note in Agenda, along with a list of the tasks I completed today from OmniFocus.

These parts working together are helping to create structure in my life, but even better, it’s sustainable structure, because I can apply the simple notion of rapid-logging from Bullet Journaling combined with the complexities of a nuanced digital system.

Great side effect: I am more disciplined about what I log. A historical problem for me in my collection of actions is overuse of shorthand as a “bookmark” of thinking for later. That’s how I’ve ended up with items in my OmniFocus inbox like “Fifty-four”. I’m sure I knew what I was referring to when I wrote it down, but no idea later. With rapid logging, and thinking of things not just as actions or notes but as journaled facts for future reflection, my capturing is much more robust.

On the Breaking Perfectionist Blocks episode of Nested Folders, Rosemary Orchard and I spitballed an idea to quickly generate a random list of three OmniFocus actions meeting a specific criteria (in our case, a tag).

Here is an iOS Shortcut that accomplishes exactly that. Enjoy!

Processing my OmniFocus inbox is critical for me, because I capture like a maniac, but because I am also easily distractible, processing the inbox can become hard for me, not because any single thing there is tough to deal with, but because it can be hard for me to stick with something long enough to get it done before I’m looking at the next thing.

This can quickly lead to overwhelm, which Rosemary Orchard and I discussed on episode 17 of our Nested Folders podcast.

To combat this, I’ve developed a workflow that I am finding super helpful for myself:

1. Create a parallel project called Triage
2. Move all actions from the inbox to Triage
3. Use this perspective to process Triage:

Now, yes, I could use a sequential project to do this, but I like to be prescriptive about when I employ that, and there are times or moments when seeing the whole project is valuable (scanning the list) so one perspective to see just one thing at a time and then the plain project view (with all its actions being available, just in case) suits me very well.

I am (once again) in love with Drafts, and having all my text start there.

While I love the idea that Rosemary Orchard had about turning on the badge in Drafts to indicate inbox items, badges amp me up too much, and so I needed a less in-the-face method of making sure these draft Drafts don’t get lost.

I felt like the smoothest thing for me to do would be to have a way of scraping whatever all is in my Drafts inbox, and then indicating to me, in OmniFocus, that I have an open action about some text (otherwise it wouldn’t be in my Drafts inbox!).

So this is the Shortcut I built. I figured I should share, because this seems like something others might be able to use, too.

Enjoy, and if you have ideas about how this might be improved, I’d be interested to hear!

If you’re keen on having all the things in Agenda, I made a Shortcut called Agenda Clipper for storing Safari pages there.

It should ask for the project in Agenda to store clips, and then can be used from the Safari share function to create a note with the name of the webpage and, if any, selected content on the page.

Hope this is helpful!

There was a question on the OmniGroup Discourse Forums the other day about seeing completed items in OmniFocus, but just the last two days' worth. While this can’t be done with Perspectives, it can be accomplished with the new Shortcuts integrations.

This Completed Items Shortcut creates a list of all OmniFocus items completed over the last two calendar days, sorted by completion time. While it just offers a Quick Look at that list, it could easily be modified to output text to the destination of your choice.

Thought I’d share, as I’m experimenting with journaling and logging my accomplishments. Enjoy!

In the past, I have written about my Agenda and OmniFocus workflow. Today, I’m excited to share an update to my Shortcut.

Now called the Agenda Meeting Wrap-Up, this Shortcut still does the same things:

• parses shared Markdown from Agenda to find both actions and completed actions
• provides the option to move those actions to an OmniFocus project for action management
• appends a link to the OmniFocus project in the shared Agenda note
• provides the option to email the contents of the note, with actions collected together, to meeting participants
• the email will pre-populate with recipients based on a lookup of the Agenda note to calendar events and getting a match's attendees (so it's good to use the Agenda "Link to Event" feature)

This corrects defects in the previous version of the Shortcut introduced by iOS 13 and other application changes. It also stops action content from landing on the clipboard.

Enjoy! I’d love to hear what you think and if this is helpful!

On the last several episodes of Nested Folders, Rosemary Orchard and I have discussed topics that directly relate to how projects are structured.

Now that Agenda supports both re-organization of sidebar items and the creation of projects via URL scheme (woohoo!), I have aligned my project structure between it and OmniFocus, allowing me to have consistent ways of reflecting reference and action material.

For my own absorption of what I’ve done and in hopes that it inspires ideas, I thought I’d share my folder structure here. I’d love to know what everyone thinks!

2020 30k

This folder houses a project for each of my 2020 goals (Horizon 3, or the 30,000 foot horizon in GTD speak), ensuring that I am regularly looking at, reflecting on, and creating actions about my goals and themes for the year. Having this folder at the top of the pile is also helpful to me in ensuring that I’m considering my themes in everything I decide to take on (or not).

Brand Makers

This folder holds projects at my work that are highly visible, highly important, and highly strategic. In other words, these are the projects that need particular attention, because they are the ones that I can use to elevate my brand and career.

Client Projects

Also for my work, these are projects my team has taken on in service of internal client needs. Most of these are production-oriented, as my team designs and builds intranet experiences.

Outcome Projects

Again, for my work, this is for projects that have definable outcomes but that didn’t come from clients. These projects tend to be enablement-oriented, perhaps around process design, consultation, or strategy development.

Properties

More projects for my work! These ones are projects in that they are containers for actions, but do not have outcomes. They are single action lists in OmniFocus, with each “project” representing a different web application, site, or property that my team supports.

Domains

The last of my professional project folders, this one again homes never ending “projects” that represent areas of focus at work (Horizon 2, or the 20,000 foot altitude in GTD speak). There is a list for each member of the team I support, and lists for administration, reporting, budget management, networking, etc.

HeyScottyJ

This folder has a mix of outcome and neverending projects related to this blog, the Nested Folders podcast, and several web sites I build and support. As this area of my life grows, I could see it breaking out into several folders over time, but for now, it can be contained in one, and I like seeing the totality of this aspect of my life when I look at projects there.

Personal

Relating to my personal life, these are outcome projects relating to my home, family, and self.

Areas

This is kind of the personal equivalent of Domains above, a group of never ending projects/single action lists that relate to the 20,000 foot level of my life. This would be lists for my wife, and each of my kids, home and household, car, finances, health, friends and family, and so on.

Checklists

This is for lists that have contain items more than actions. Some examples are lists of books to read, gifts to consider, things I might want to buy myself, foods and wines to try, and so on.

And that’s he breakdown of my folder structure! I like that it is flat, because I feel it is manageable enough that way, and helps me look across all my things easily.

I’m interested to hear if this resonates or inspires, and thank you for taking the time to read this through!